My Trip to Matheran

A trip to Matheran
It was the day before holi (21st March '08). Starting of a long weekend. I started off on my trip to matheran along with my friend on friday early morning. We took a karzat bound train from kurla. It was fast local till kalyan and stopped at every station after kalyan. It was a tiring 1 and a half hour journey. From neral, we were interested in taking the toy train (http://www.luxury-train-travel-tours-india.com/hill-trains-in-india/matheran-light-railway.html). But, ended up with a disappointment when we saw that it is fully booked till the weekend. Then, we took a cab from neral to matheran. It costed us just 100 bucks (50 per person). The cab was fully packed with 9 people. Still, we had to take it as we had no other option. It's just a 9 km travel (2625 feet above sea level) and the cab driver covered the distance very quickly.

We didn't have a good plan. Still, we managed to visit "monkey point", "hart point" and "Charlotte lake". Also, we attempted some sort of adventerous stuff out there (guess i can call it cliff-hanging... not sure). There was a rope tied between two rocks and we need to go from one to the other almost lying down. Was really a very different experience for us. There were hell lot of monkeys everywhere (except the monkey point :) ). One of the monkeys snatched away the goodday pack from my friend. We thought we won't get anything to eat at noon. But, we were amazed to find a lot of restaurants at "bazaar peth". We had gujarati thali in a restaurant there. Costed us 160 bucks. Roti was really good.

There were loads of horses going through the place all the while. At one point, we had couple of monkeys blocking our way on the front & a horse almost knocking us down from the back side. Forgot to mention about the sand. It was red sand all the way. And with the horses in action all the while, you may need to keep your face covered if you are allergic to dust. I thought of wearing my new shoe for the trip. But, my friend warned me about the sand. So, I settled for my old one. His warning turned out true. The shoe was wearing a very sad look by the time we returned.

While walking, we could find lots of drinks stalls. You can try having a good "neeboo sharbath" at regular intervals. While coming back home, we were totally worn out as we walked for atleast 10 to 12 kilometres during the day. To sum up, it was really a very good break. Away from regular day to day activities.